When David Lebovitz began the project of updating his apartment in his adopted home city, he never imagined he would encounter so much inexplicable red tape while contending with the famously inconsistent European work ethic and hours. Lebovitz maintains his distinctive sense of humor with the help of his partner, Romain, peppering this renovation story with recipes from his Paris kitchen.

5 out of 5 stars

Love this author! Pastries and Plaster in Paris!

By
vintagebarrio
on
11-12-17

My (Part-Time) Paris Life

How Running Away Brought Me Home

By:
Lisa Anselmo

Narrated by:
Lisa Anselmo

Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
32

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
29

Story

4 out of 5 stars
30

Lisa Anselmo wraps her entire life around her mother, a strong woman who is a defining force in Lisa's life - maybe too defining. When her mother dies from breast cancer, Lisa realizes she hasn't built a life of her own and struggles to find her purpose. Who is she without her mother - and her mother's expectations? Desperate for answers, she turns to her favorite city - Paris - and impulsively buys a small apartment, refusing to play it safe for the first time.

5 out of 5 stars

Bravo

By
Leslie
on
01-07-18

The Vanity Fair Diaries

1983-1992

By:
Tina Brown

Narrated by:
Tina Brown

Length: 16 hrs and 41 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
192

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
179

Story

4 out of 5 stars
178

The Vanity Fair Diaries is the story of an Englishwoman barely out of her 20s who arrives in New York City with a dream. Summoned from London in hopes that she can save Condé Nast's troubled new flagship
Vanity Fair, Tina Brown is immediately plunged into the maelstrom of the competitive New York media world and the backstabbing rivalries at the court of the planet's slickest, most glamour-focused magazine company. She survives the politics, the intrigue, and the attempts to derail her by a simple stratagem: succeeding.

5 out of 5 stars

There is something about the Brits...

By
Sylvia
on
12-11-17

The Bonjour Effect

The Secret Codes of French Conversation Revealed

By:
Julie Barlow,
Jean-Benoit Nadeau

Narrated by:
Teri Schnaubelt

Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
13

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
9

Story

4 out of 5 stars
9

Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow spent a decade traveling back and forth to Paris as well as living there. Yet one important lesson never seemed to sink in: how to communicate comfortably with the French, even when you speak their language. In
The Bonjour Effect, Jean-Benoît and Julie chronicle the lessons they learned after they returned to France to live, for a year, with their twin daughters. They offer up all the lessons they learned and explain the most important aspect of all: the French don't communicate, they converse.

3 out of 5 stars

Interesting but a bit unfocused at times

By
Rob-o
on
02-05-18

The Bettencourt Affair

The World's Richest Woman and the Scandal That Rocked Paris

By:
Tom Sancton

Narrated by:
Amanda Carlin

Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
148

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
136

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
136

Was the world's wealthiest woman - Liliane Bettencourt - heir to an estimated $36 billion L'Oréal fortune, the victim of a con man? Or were her own family the real villains? This riveting narrative tells the real-life, shocking story behind the cause célèbre that has captivated both France and the world.

4 out of 5 stars

A Juicy Chronicle

By
Jean
on
10-24-17

Today Will Be Different

By:
Maria Semple

Narrated by:
Kathleen Wilhoite

Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins

Unabridged

Overall

3.5 out of 5 stars
1,077

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
1,002

Story

3.5 out of 5 stars
1,000

Eleanor knows she's a mess. But today she will tackle the little things. She will shower and get dressed. She will have her poetry and yoga lessons after dropping off her son, Timby. She won't swear. She will initiate sex with her husband, Joe. But before she can put her modest plan into action - life happens. Today, it turns out, is the day Timby has decided to fake sick to weasel his way into his mother's company. It's also the day Joe has chosen to tell his office - but not Eleanor - that he's on vacation.

4 out of 5 stars

Weird, but fascinating.

By
Happy Mama
on
10-08-16

L'Appart

The Delights and Disasters of Making My Paris Home

By:
David Lebovitz

Narrated by:
Graham Halstead

Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
43

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
39

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
39

When David Lebovitz began the project of updating his apartment in his adopted home city, he never imagined he would encounter so much inexplicable red tape while contending with the famously inconsistent European work ethic and hours. Lebovitz maintains his distinctive sense of humor with the help of his partner, Romain, peppering this renovation story with recipes from his Paris kitchen.

5 out of 5 stars

Love this author! Pastries and Plaster in Paris!

By
vintagebarrio
on
11-12-17

My (Part-Time) Paris Life

How Running Away Brought Me Home

By:
Lisa Anselmo

Narrated by:
Lisa Anselmo

Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
32

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
29

Story

4 out of 5 stars
30

Lisa Anselmo wraps her entire life around her mother, a strong woman who is a defining force in Lisa's life - maybe too defining. When her mother dies from breast cancer, Lisa realizes she hasn't built a life of her own and struggles to find her purpose. Who is she without her mother - and her mother's expectations? Desperate for answers, she turns to her favorite city - Paris - and impulsively buys a small apartment, refusing to play it safe for the first time.

5 out of 5 stars

Bravo

By
Leslie
on
01-07-18

The Vanity Fair Diaries

1983-1992

By:
Tina Brown

Narrated by:
Tina Brown

Length: 16 hrs and 41 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
192

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
179

Story

4 out of 5 stars
178

The Vanity Fair Diaries is the story of an Englishwoman barely out of her 20s who arrives in New York City with a dream. Summoned from London in hopes that she can save Condé Nast's troubled new flagship
Vanity Fair, Tina Brown is immediately plunged into the maelstrom of the competitive New York media world and the backstabbing rivalries at the court of the planet's slickest, most glamour-focused magazine company. She survives the politics, the intrigue, and the attempts to derail her by a simple stratagem: succeeding.

5 out of 5 stars

There is something about the Brits...

By
Sylvia
on
12-11-17

The Bonjour Effect

The Secret Codes of French Conversation Revealed

By:
Julie Barlow,
Jean-Benoit Nadeau

Narrated by:
Teri Schnaubelt

Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
13

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
9

Story

4 out of 5 stars
9

Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow spent a decade traveling back and forth to Paris as well as living there. Yet one important lesson never seemed to sink in: how to communicate comfortably with the French, even when you speak their language. In
The Bonjour Effect, Jean-Benoît and Julie chronicle the lessons they learned after they returned to France to live, for a year, with their twin daughters. They offer up all the lessons they learned and explain the most important aspect of all: the French don't communicate, they converse.

3 out of 5 stars

Interesting but a bit unfocused at times

By
Rob-o
on
02-05-18

The Bettencourt Affair

The World's Richest Woman and the Scandal That Rocked Paris

By:
Tom Sancton

Narrated by:
Amanda Carlin

Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
148

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
136

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
136

Was the world's wealthiest woman - Liliane Bettencourt - heir to an estimated $36 billion L'Oréal fortune, the victim of a con man? Or were her own family the real villains? This riveting narrative tells the real-life, shocking story behind the cause célèbre that has captivated both France and the world.

4 out of 5 stars

A Juicy Chronicle

By
Jean
on
10-24-17

Today Will Be Different

By:
Maria Semple

Narrated by:
Kathleen Wilhoite

Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins

Unabridged

Overall

3.5 out of 5 stars
1,077

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
1,002

Story

3.5 out of 5 stars
1,000

Eleanor knows she's a mess. But today she will tackle the little things. She will shower and get dressed. She will have her poetry and yoga lessons after dropping off her son, Timby. She won't swear. She will initiate sex with her husband, Joe. But before she can put her modest plan into action - life happens. Today, it turns out, is the day Timby has decided to fake sick to weasel his way into his mother's company. It's also the day Joe has chosen to tell his office - but not Eleanor - that he's on vacation.

4 out of 5 stars

Weird, but fascinating.

By
Happy Mama
on
10-08-16

Parisian Charm School

French Secrets for Cultivating Love, Joy, and That Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi

By:
Jamie Cat Callan

Narrated by:
Saskia Maarleveld

Length: 4 hrs and 50 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
10

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
9

Story

3.5 out of 5 stars
8

Filled with advice and insights from Parisian women, this delightful guide shows listeners how to cultivate charm and mystique in the age of Tinder and OKCupid - to find lasting romance and connection.

3 out of 5 stars

Not what i expected

By
S. Neyhart
on
02-21-18

Commonwealth

By:
Ann Patchett

Narrated by:
Hope Davis

Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
5,606

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
5,104

Story

4 out of 5 stars
5,107

One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny's mother, Beverly - thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families.

Told in three distinct and uniquely compelling sections,
Asymmetry explores the imbalances that spark and sustain many of our most dramatic human relations: inequities in age, power, talent, wealth, fame, geography, and justice. The first section, "Folly", tells the story of Alice, a young American editor, and her relationship with the famous and much older writer Ezra Blazer. A tender and exquisite account of an unexpected romance that takes place in New York during the early years of the Iraq War.

4 out of 5 stars

Leaving a Doll's House, again

By
Brian
on
02-24-18

You Don't Look Your Age

And Other Fairy Tales

By:
Sheila Nevins

Narrated by:
Lena Dunham,
Meryl Streep,
Katie Couric,
and others

Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
355

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
329

Story

4 out of 5 stars
328

Sheila Nevins is the best friend you never knew you had. She is your discreet confidante you can tell any secret to, your sage mentor at work who helps you navigate the often uneven playing field, your wise sister who has “been there, done that,” your hysterical girlfriend whose stories about men will make you laugh until you cry. Sheila Nevins is the one person who always tells it like it is.

2 out of 5 stars

Not what I was hoping for at all.

By
Lili
on
06-19-17

The Sweet Life in Paris

Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City

By:
David Lebovitz

Narrated by:
David Drummond

Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
111

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
101

Story

4 out of 5 stars
100

Like so many others, David Lebovitz dreamed about living in Paris ever since he first visited the city in the 1980s. Finally, after a nearly two-decade career as a pastry chef and cookbook author, he moved to Paris to start a new life. Having crammed all his worldly belongings into three suitcases, he arrived, hopes high, at his new apartment in the lively Bastille neighborhood.

2 out of 5 stars

Great content, but it needs a different narrator

By
Jennifer Sader
on
09-22-12

A Gentleman in Moscow

A Novel

By:
Amor Towles

Narrated by:
Nicholas Guy Smith

Length: 17 hrs and 52 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
14,221

Performance

5 out of 5 stars
13,199

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
13,164

A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in an elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors.

5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant, heartfelt, inspiring

By
Jon K. Rust
on
07-24-17

Avid Reader

A Life

By:
Robert Gottlieb

Narrated by:
Robert Gottlieb

Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
122

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
115

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
113

After editing
The Columbia Review, staging plays at Cambridge, and a stint in the greeting-card department of Macy's, Robert Gottlieb stumbled into a job at Simon & Schuster. By the time he left to run Alfred A. Knopf a dozen years later, he was the editor in chief, having discovered and edited
Catch-22 and
The American Way of Death, among other best sellers. At Knopf, Gottlieb edited an astonishing list of authors, including Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Doris Lessing, and John le Carré - not to mention Bruno Bettelheim and Miss Piggy.

5 out of 5 stars

A Lifetime of Reading and Editing

By
Steve M
on
12-06-16

Hillbilly Elegy

A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

By:
J. D. Vance

Narrated by:
J. D. Vance

Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
31,400

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
28,226

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
28,165

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis - that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over 40 years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

5 out of 5 stars

Enlightening!

By
Gotta Tellya
on
09-11-16

Cork Dork

A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste

By:
Bianca Bosker

Narrated by:
Bianca Bosker

Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
624

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
582

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
581

Amateur drinker and professional tech reporter Bianca Bosker didn't know much about wine - until she stumbled on an alternate universe where taste reigned supreme, a world of master sommeliers who could, after a single sip, identify the grape a bottle was made from, in what year, and where it was produced, within acres. Where she tasted wine, they detected not only complex flavor profiles but entire histories and geographies.

5 out of 5 stars

Vivid

By
Toma Dursina
on
04-04-17

On Turpentine Lane

A Novel

By:
Elinor Lipman

Narrated by:
Mia Barron

Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
132

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
120

Story

4 out of 5 stars
118

At 32, Faith Frankel has returned to her claustro-suburban hometown, where she writes institutional thank-you notes for her alma mater. It's a peaceful life, really, and surely with her recent purchase of a sweet bungalow on Turpentine Lane, her life is finally on track. Never mind that her fiancé is off on a crowdfunded cross-country walk, too busy to return her texts (but not too busy to post photos of himself with a different woman in every state).

4 out of 5 stars

A little slow...

By
Mary
on
06-15-17

The Rules Do Not Apply

A Memoir

By:
Ariel Levy

Narrated by:
Ariel Levy

Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
553

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
501

Story

4 out of 5 stars
501

A gorgeous, darkly humorous memoir for listeners of Cheryl Strayed about a woman overcoming dramatic loss and finding reinvention, based on this award-winning writer's
New Yorker article "Thanksgiving in Mongolia".

3 out of 5 stars

Selfishly Entitled

By
Amazon Customer
on
08-05-17

The Arrangement

A Novel

By:
Sarah Dunn

Narrated by:
Ellen Archer

Length: 9 hrs and 1 min

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
914

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
845

Story

4 out of 5 stars
842

Lucy and Owen, ambitious, thoroughly-therapized New Yorkers, have taken the plunge, trading in their crazy life in a cramped apartment for Beekman, a bucolic Hudson Valley exurb. They've got a 200-year-old house, an autistic son obsessed with the Titanic whose verbal ticks often sound like a broken record, and 17 chickens, at last count.

5 out of 5 stars

Great Story!

By
Teresa
on
05-16-17

Publisher's Summary

A language barrier is no match for love. Lauren Collins discovered this firsthand when, in her early 30s, she moved to London and fell for a Frenchman named Olivier - a surprising turn of events for someone who didn't have a passport until she was in college. But what does it mean to love someone in a second language? Collins wonders, as her relationship with Olivier continues to grow entirely in English. Are there things she doesn't understand about Olivier, having never spoken to him in his native tongue? Does "I love you" even mean the same thing as "je t'aime"? When the couple, newly married, relocates to Francophone Geneva, Collins - fearful of one day becoming "a Borat of a mother" who doesn't understand her own kids - decides to answer her questions for herself by learning French.

When in French is a laugh-out-loud funny and surprising memoir about the lengths we go to for love, as well as an exploration across culture and history into how we learn languages - and what they say about who we are. Collins grapples with the complexities of the French language, enduring excruciating role-playing games with her classmates at a Swiss language school and accidently telling her mother-in-law that she's given birth to a coffee machine. In learning French, Collins must wrestle with the very nature of French identity and society - which, it turns out, is a far cry from life back home in North Carolina. Plumbing the mysterious depths of humanity's many forms of language, Collins describes with great style and wicked humor the frustrations, embarrassments, surprises, and, finally, joys of learning - and living - in French.

Not What I Expected

I thought this would be a fun listen about a couple and their culture clash, on a personal level and not peripherally. Instead, it is a chiefly a rather dry showcase of the author's vocabulary and knowledge of linguistics. Tres dommage.

More than expected!

I have a French sister in law and nephew, so this seemed perfect for me as I try and recall all the French I learned in high school and college and have started listening to tapes so I can visit them in France. Besides the authors personal experience, there are lots of interesting facts about the history of French and language in general that I was not expecting but found fascinating! Feeling more inspired to keep trying. Je veux parler Francais!